Impcantation Ruined Rituals

Ritual is an interesting Special Summoning mechanic. Just like Pendulums, Rituals are Special Summoned from the hand rather than the Extra Deck. However, for the same reason, Rituals suffer many consistency and minus issues. Over the years, Konami has released Ritual Archetypes that addresses these problems. Then one day, Konami decided to fix all these issues by creating the Impcantation archetype. Suddenly, Ritual decks became more consistent and less costly. However, Impcantation did more harm than good.

What is Impcantation?

Impcantation is an archetype that supports Ritual Summoning. It’s an engine designed to be splash into other Ritual Decks where it addresses two issues of the ritual mechanic – consistency and minusing. The archetype creates tribute fodders on the field and searches either a Ritual Spell or Monster from the Deck or Graveyard.

The archetype’s design of supporting other decks is reinforced in the archetype’s Ritual Spell and Ritual Monsters. Impcantation Ritual Spell is an extremely flexible Ritual Spell that summons any Ritual Monsters if all the materials were Impcantation monsters. It has an additional grave effect that recycles itself, generate a tribute fodder and searches a Ritual Monster or Spell.

The Negative Impact on Rituals

The Impcantation archetypes have supported many Ritual Decks. Rituals (e.g. Hungry Burger) finally found a way to swarm the field and recover their resources easily. Impcantation gave Rituals the same freedom of summoning anything as other summoning mechanics. However, at the same time, it also gimped the design of future ritual archetypes.

This is noticeable if we break Rituals into three categories. “Old School Rituals“, “Evolving Rituals” and “Impcantation Era Rituals“.

Old School Rituals are Rituals released during the DM and GX period. These rituals have no consistency and recovery options. Many of the monsters are vanilla beaters. Notable Ritual Monsters here are Herald of Perfection, Demise and Hungry Burger. These Rituals benefit from Impcantation as they have little searching and resource management.

Evolving Rituals are Rituals released during the late GX to the end Arc-V period. During this period, Rituals began to develop into archetypes. Many of the archetypes can search, recover and recycle its Ritual Spell. The most notable ritual archetypes during this period are Gishki and Nekroz. Many of these archetypes don’t benefit from Impcantation. They’re consistent enough and prefer not to waste deck space.

Impcantation Era Rituals are Rituals released around the same time and after Impcantation’s debut. Rituals during this period lack the previous Rituals’ searching capability and resource recovery. Notable Ritual Archetypes during this era include Shinobirds, Nephthys and Megalith.

Notice how the “Impcantation Era Rituals” doesn’t have the searching capability and resource recovery compared to the “Evolving Rituals”?

Consistency Issues

Many Impcantation Era Rituals doesn’t have the searching capability of Evolving Rituals. Searchers in these archetypes are often limited, slow and convoluted. In fact, many of the searchings require the player to Ritual Summon first. For example, Vendread‘s Ritual Spell searcher requires ritual summoning. Shinobirds has no searchers outside of Aratama and Pre-Preparation of Rites. Vendread‘s ritual spell searching is pretty much nonexistent. Demise/Ruin‘s searching is slow and convoluted. Nephthys has several searchers, but it requires going minus and it’s slow.

Now let’s look at the Evolving Ritual Archetypes. Cyber Angel has four cards to search out your pieces. Nekroz is famous for searching out everything. Even Prediction Princess has four different searchers.

Now, why do Impcantation Era Rituals suffer from these consistency issues? Surely, the newer archetypes should be more consistent? The problem lies with Impcantation. Konami designed these archetypes (especially Demise) to play in conjunction with Impcantation. Due to this, many of the Impcantation Era Rituals are inconsistent. Now, why can’t a Ritual Archetype be consistent and also use Impcantation? Because it causes balance issues as the deck will become too consistent.

Resource Management Issues

Impcantation Era Rituals have poor resource management. Many of the Ritual archetypes can’t recover from the high cost of Ritual Summoning. For example, Demise lacks any gimmicks to recover its resources from Ritual Summoning.

Shinobird lives and dies after Ritual Summoning. It has no way to recycle the Ritual Spell after using it three times. It’s impossible to play Demise/Ruin the way Konami designed them (Ritual Climbing). The deck minuses way too much with no reliable way to recover them. Vendread‘s main gameplay seems to be to minus as much as possible.

Now, why do Impcantation Era Rituals suffer from these resource management issues? The problem lies again with Impcantation. They can put out tribute fodder and recycle Ritual Spells and Monsters. Thus, it’s not essential to give them proper resource management. Let’s look at Shinobird. Impcantation allowed that archetype to Ritual Summon more than three times. Konami released Shinobirds around the same time as Impcantation. It’s clear Konami wanted the players to play the two archetypes together.

Interactions with Megalith

I’m sure you think that it’s a mere coincidence that many Impcantation Era Rituals suffers from these issues. Well, let’s look at Megalith.

Megalith is an archetype released after the debut of Impcantation. Megalith has decent searchers and resource management similar to Evolving Rituals. However, it doesn’t have a Ritual Spell. This means they can’t use Impcantation in its full glory unless you add the Ritual Spell. Now again, it could be mere coincidences. However, it is strange that the one archetype released after the debut of Impcantation with decent consistency and resource management lacks a Ritual Spell.

Conclusion

Impcantation gimped the designs of newer Ritual Decks. Despite this, the archetype has helped make older Ritual Decks more playable and viable. Certain decks like Shinobird and Demise are practically unplayable without Impcantation. What do you think? Do you think Konami will make Ritual Archetypes more independent again like Nekroz and Gishki? Or do you think they’ll stick to this current design philosophy?

5 thoughts on “Impcantation Ruined Rituals”

Impcantations were introduced in the set Cybernetic Horizon (2018)…and Shinobirds were released in 2016 in Raging Tempest, about a year and a half apart. Same issue with vendreads, who were introduced in Code Of The Duelist. Only Demise and Nephthys apply really.

And honestly look at these four. Notice something else about them?

Yeah, they’re all heavily Gimmick based. Vendreads are more a story than an archtype, Nephthys revolves around a non Ritual Monster and it’s effect, Shinobirds are also Spirits and Demise/Ruin are based around using other Ritual Monsters.

Then look at Megalith. Don’t they look familiar? They’re Rock Nekroz. No wonder they’re more consistent: they’re designed with less Gimmicks and more consistency,

We can see this design issue in other places, like the new Ra support. The Ra support excludes the other two versions to focus on the original which you could argue is an attempt to avoid Sphere Mode…or it’s based on the Gimmick of Marik’s deck.

HOnestly to me, this is like blaming Nekroz for slower Ritual speed or Zombie Engine for vendreads. It’s all circumstantial.

Themadhatter

April 9, 2020 at 12:49 am

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Lol, when you disprove someone’s entire argument

rebornthejam

April 9, 2020 at 8:47 am

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@KOB13
Hi. Thank you for commenting.

I’m well aware of Shinobirds and Vendread. That’s why in my article when I was explaining “Post-Imp Rituals”, I wrote rituals around the same time. Cards go through months to even years of “planning -> designing -> printing -> testing -> reprinting -> retesting -> Checking product promotion and cross-promotion” before they are released. I don’t doubt that Konami had Imp in the planning board when they rolled out Shinobirds and Vendreads.

Sure the four decks are gimmicky. That’s what makes archetypes unique. It’s the same with Synchro, Fusion, Xyz, Links and Pendulums. Konami has always tried to incorporate gimmicks into their archetype to make them different. Gishki has a one card tribute and tried to push for stacking their deck with Gishki monsters to take advantage of Zielgigas and the LVL 8 rituals effect. Cyber Angel has a gimmick of tributing the rituals to gain additional effects. Nekroz has a hand trap gimmick (as well as tonnes of others). Prediction Princess is a Flip deck. Yet they’re all far more consistent and have better resource management than most modern ritual decks. Even BLS, an extremely inconsistent ritual archetype that has a similar gimmick as Demise/Ruin and Vendread, has more searchers than Demise/Ruin and Vendread, and it was released before Demise/Ruin and Vendread. Konami barely tried to create searchers for Demise/Ruin and Vendread. Konami advertised Demise/Ruin in the pack where Imp made its debut. They always planned the two archetypes to play together. The levels of the imps even add up together to make Level 10 boss monsters. Vendread is the same thing. It’s clear from the way they wrote the Ritual Spell that they thought Pre-Prep, Imp, etc is all they need.

One can even argue that Cyber Angel has similar playstyle to Demise/Ruin since they also tribute their smaller ritual monsters. However, Cyber Angel is at least playable and quite consistent on its own.

I can’t see how Megalith is similar to Nekroz at all. If you mean discarding itself, then sure, but they’re very different in every other way from the gimmick, playstyle and lore.

I don’t think it’s fair to compare modern ritual archetype gimmicks to anime legacy support. Anime legacy supports have always mostly been gimmicky to match the user’s playstyle even if it clashes with the deck (e.g. look at Red-Eyes).

Of course, it’s circumstantial. That’s why I asked readers for their opinion. Unless Konami outright says it, we can only speculate. It’s like how some players thought for years that Konami would never make a reptile archetype that uses the GY due to the existence of Snake Rain. It’s circumstantial.

When I say ‘heavily Gimmick based’- I mean that they adhere more to a theme and stick almost strictly to it then say, trading off some of that theming for more conventional and successful aspects.

The difference between Shinobirds and Vendreads to Cyber Angels and Nekroz is that Shinobirds and Vendreads rigidly restrict their effects to fit their theme whereas Nekroz and Cyber Angel have themes…but their cards reinforce consistent plays rather than themeatics. While Nekroz have the themes of representing past Duel terminal cards and Cyber Angels have a general mechanical vibe- Their effects are more based around being consistent and generally more playable than Shinobirds, who focus heavily on the Spirit monster theme, and Vendreads, who use their cards less to make the deck playable than to tell a story.

The big reason why I compared Megalith and Nekroz is because those cards have Rituals with immediate and useful effects like Nekroz, which is why it was so successful.

Ra isn’t the only example I can think of either for Konami prioritizing themes over playability. Darklords stick to theme of Life point cost and recycling their spells and traps even when some of their cards would work better without that theme (like giving the new Level 4s or the Level 3 the copying ability or removing the costs on their Fusion Trap). The World Legacy cards could have been an actual archtype but Konami kept to their theme of them belonging to other archtypes instead. The World Chalice cards would have worked better without being so Normal Monster based but they kept it around because of the characters being ordinary people.

I’ll state my point bluntly to make certain we understand each other: I don’t think Demise/Ruin, Shinobirds or Vendreads were affected by the design of Impcantations. I think they were the victims of Konami’s erratic and unpredictable card designs. This is just another in the long line of cards that just don’t click because Konami is chaotic when it comes to make archtypes consistent.

rebornthejam

April 10, 2020 at 1:03 am

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@KOB13
Hi, thanks for replying.

I respect your point, but I don’t quite understand your stance. Because in the end, you’re saying it’s Konami’s choice to stick mostly with the gimmick and not add conventional methods that make the archetype work. This is my article’s point. I’m literally saying Konami is refusing to add conventional searching and recovering to make the modern Ritual Archetypes work. Now whether the reason why they’re doing that is because of Impcantation is only a theory, and I’m simply proposing this theory due to the timing of everything (and Demise/Ruin advertisement).

Furthermore, a deck can be extremely gimmicky or follow a thematic but also playable. Nothing is stopping Konami from making Decks like Shinobird gimmicky but also consistent. For example, let’s look at Shinobird. They could’ve easily allowed Crane to search for other Shinobird or gave Crow better effects that fit with the archetype/series. I mean, look at Crow’s effect. It seriously clashes with the archetype’s playstyle of bouncing away monsters. I’ll bring up Infernity. They’re extremely gimmicky with their handless playstyle, but they actually have searchers. Same with Prediction Princess. Just like Shinobird where Shinobird focuses on the playstyle of “spirit”, Prediction Princess focuses on the playstyle of “Flip” monsters. However, Prediction Princess is given tools that allow them to function, search and recover in the form of the Ritual Spell, Crystaldine, Coinorma, Tarotrei and Arrowsyph. Now am I going to pretend Prediction Princess is an amazing deck? No, of course not, but you can see that Konami gave them the tools and effects to function despite being a heavily gimmicky FLIP/Ritual base deck.

Same thing with Vendread. They can easily tell a story but also give it remotely consistent effects or address the minus issues, but they chose not to do that. For example, why are the levels of the smaller monsters so clunky and inconsistent? Why doesn’t Nightmare give a 1000 ATK boost before you attack rather than after? Why does Nightmare forces you to tribute monsters in your hand to increase Levels rather than raising its attack or let you search for a Ritual Spell? Why does Houndhorde forces you to discard a Vendread monster to SS itself?

As for Megalith and Nekroz. Having immediate effects is still a far cry of saying the two being similar. Anyway, that’s beside the point. Honestly, I don’t think Megalith is that successful. Now I’m not sure whether things will change when Phul gets released. However, it’s definitely a step in the right direction for modern rituals.

Yes, Darklord has a theme, but they can actually function. The same thing with World Chalice and World Legacy. World Chalice or techs (e.g. Unexpected Dai) that actually addresses the drawback of Normal Monsters and uses it as an advantage. I can’t say the same with archetypes like Nephyths because the archetype made no attempt to address the “wait till SP after it gets destroyed by card effect” to make the deck semi-functional. I’m not saying to ignore the “wait to SP” effect, but give them better effects. I mean is it hard for Konami to allow Disciple to search both a Spell/Trap and monster?

Great. That’s your opinion and I respect that. I do find it strange that you don’t believe Demise/Ruin is affected by Imp, considering they were literally advertised alongside each other.

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